Overview
The Happy Station in Yilan was formerly the old bus transfer station of the region. With over 30 years of history to the place, the venue represents a shared memory of Yilan residents and has deep historical meaning. In May 2016, we answered the call of the Yilan County Government Social Affairs Department to renovate the abandoned station. Our team took over, furnished the place, and incorporated art into the charity project to make a multi-purpose tourist attraction. The new Happy Station is run as a charity venue that recruits from the disabled and the disadvantaged in the area to perform daily operations and maintenance tasks, letting them learn practical career skills or basic daily abilities through gainful employment. The station is a safe space without any discrimination and lets them interact naturally with the general public, develop interpersonal relationships, and get accustomed to a social lifestyle, ultimately helping them to realize happiness by finding their raison d'etre and purpose for life.
For more than one thousand days, we kept our promise to the Yilan County Government and gave active feedback. We rented space within the station at no cost to the ABAO Educational Foundation for them to set up an arts and crafts workshop and the Slow Snail Café. While the workshop allowed disabled people to learn simple tasks, the café was a place for them to get acclimated to the workplace. In 2018, we applied to the Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, for a revitalization project within the station. We were able to acquire part of the requested funding, which helped us keep the station running. In the summer of 2019, the Yilan Happy Station underwent its 2.0 upgrade. We converted our previous plans for the "Massage Service Bus Run by the Visually Impaired" to the "Friendly Library Bus" that promotes accessible reading and parent-child reading. We co-manage the bus with the Yilan Municipal Library and have carefully selected over 500 books that are perfect for parent-child reading or about literature, travel, and the arts to reflect Yilan's cultural atmosphere.